Arknights: Module Upgrade Priority Guide

Module Upgrades are, as of now, the final frontier in regards to Operator upgrades. Not only do they require significant levels of investment before even becoming available, but the amount of materials they demand from the player are also greater than any other sort of upgrade currently available, oft for absolutely menial boosts in both stats and effect. In addition, some of the materials they require are also severely timegated behind Stationary Security Service, which in turn makes it so players will not be able to fully upgrade every single Module they own in a timely manner.

This guide will, following the style of TacticalBreakfast's Mastery Priority Guide, showcase the most noteworthy Module Upgrades with short and concise explanations on what makes those specific upgrades worth the investment. Additionally, this guide will exclude any deemed not impactful enough to spend resources on.

Last but most definitely not least, keep in mind this guide will NOT rate the direct meta power or viability of these upgrades or the Operators they belong to, and instead focus on the relative strength of the individual Module Upgrade and the individual boost in performance of their Operator. In short, if you already use these Operators often, how prioritary are these endgame upgrades for their viability?

If you wish to quickly find the ratings given to a specific Module Upgrade, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F and search for the name or branch of the Module or the Operator they belong to.

Unlike in the Mastery Priority Guide, this list will not sub-grade upgrades in terms of how powerful they are relative to other investment sinks. Instead, only the following three ratings will be utilized.

[YES] - Upgrades given this grade will provide a substantial enough boost to the Operator's combat prowess that the before and after performances will be easily noticeable. The Module Upgrades in this tier are incredibly powerful and fundamentally change how the Operator plays or massively improve their combat performance. These boosts are to be considered stepping stones in fully realizing the combat potential of the Operator they belong to. Upgrades whose affected Talents are directly boosted via Skills are likely to end up here.

[CONSIDER] - While not as powerful nor prioritary as the upgrades in the tier above, these are still fairly strong and worthy of at least being considered. These upgrades will either enhance the Operator's strength in a noticeable but not game-changing manner, or open new niches for them to perform in. Regardless, these should not be considered a priority over the upgrades in the previous tier.

[NO] - Module Upgrades with this grade are generally disappointing boosts or not worth considering due to their extreme cost and low benefit. While no upgrade of this kind is ever going to be detrimental to your Operators, these will not provide noticeable enhancements in performance nor provide new niche use cases.

Module Upgrades with [NO] ratings all accross the board will not be listed in this guide nor its updates to preserve clarity and readability. If a Module Upgrade branch does not appear here, it's likely because its effects are too negligible to be worth the investment, even if the Operator they belong to is widely used.

This Module Upgrade branch affects Pallas' Minoan-related Talent, which in practice means it only affects the buffs she provides to herself.

Pallas lives and dies by the strength of her multipliers, particularly the way they interact with her S1, but the boosts this upgrade provides are not so incredible as to grant her a massive boost in average DPS. The lowered threshold for her Vigor buff is good on paper, but in practice Pallas already struggles with blocking any sort of enemy as it reduces her DPS by a significant margin, so via the blocking support she often gets it's unlikely this will be a dealbreaker in many scenarios.

Being able to deploy an additional summon is extremely powerful for Magallan, as it will give her much, much better control over the battlefield with either of her Skills.

This Module Upgrade branch will make it much easier for her to solo stages if need be, but also provide with more versatile 

One of Passenger's biggest issues is that his Skill 3 charge time is quite atrocious, which really hurts his overall DPS. The CHA-X Module Upgrade variant seeks to fix that, giving him a better uptime so he can call down thunder and lightning upon his enemies more often.

If instead what you want is higher burst damage, CHA-Y will greatly improve that aspect of Passenger's kit, letting him take advantage of the charges his Skill 3 can hold for maximum DPS over the 4 second duration of this boost.

In general, both Module branches for Passenger are worth acquiring and upgrading, but most players will prefer to start with CHA-X.

While likely not as strong as a Module Upgrade that would buff Phantom's clone directly, the redeployment timer decrease helps alleviate the de-sync issues Phantom often faces, allowing for a more comfortable and consistent source of burst damage and crowd control.

This upgrade boosts Ch'en's ability to support other Operators with the adequate SP recovery type further, but most importantly it significantly improves Ch'en's skill uptime, addressing one of the biggest issues she has.

Being able to utilize her abilities more often greatly benefits Ch'en's Skill 3, solidiflying her as a concentrated burst option and away from the old ways of helidropping her Skill 2.

These Upgrades almost exclusively focus on granting Bagpipe better helidrop capabilities, particularly if her Skill 2 is equipped.

While not particularly strong, as an early-game Operator Bagpipe does enjoy having her Skills ready quickly to fend off any particularly dangerous threats, so this boost is at the very least noticeable in that regard.

While the effect of Ling's Module Upgrade is the exact same as Magallan's [Y] Module Upgrades, the former takes much more advantage of its practical effects due to her Skill 3 fusion mechanics. Being able to deploy one extra summon means having a grand total of 3 higher-form Thunderers and 1 small one, which really is overkill for Ling.

The Stage 3 Module grants Ling's summons even more stats which is obviously a nice bonus, but the second stage is where the powerspike is at.

With these Upgrades, Nearl the Radiant Knight will be able to more easily punch through enemies with very high Defense stats. It is definitely more geared towards her Skill 2, (as her Skill 3 has a particular focus for true damage) so her role as an assassin for elite enemies and bosses gets solidified.

Both of Skadi's Module Upgrades massively enhance her combat performance, and are clearly more oriented at either abusing the raw helidrop power of her Skill 2 or the higher on-field strengths of Skill 3. Regardless, Skadi tends to gear towards her DRE-X Module most often, even in situations where DRE-Y may fare better on paper such as in Abyssal Hunter squads. Keep this in mind when investing in these.

While the additional damage effect is nothing to write home about, gaining SP after triggering her Skills really helps W perform much better. All of her better Skills work on a delay, and Skill 3 particularly is great burst DPS that scales really well against larger waves of enemies, so she is bound to get a ton of mileage out of the SP booster if she has a good position and her Skill is activated at the right time.

This upgrade doubles the regular values of Mostima's Talent and adds an additional bonus to further slow down enemies outside of range. This Talent interacts with Skill 3, tripling the Movement Speed reduction to 90% (99% with P5) in a very large area, slowing all enemies down to a crawl. With this Upgrade, Mostima is able to reach the movement speed reduction cap all by herself on most enemies in the game.

Specter the Unchained is perhaps the main reason why Module Upgrades even exist, as she was considered an often worse alternative to her regular version due to her SP charging issues. The PUM-X Upgrade branch solves that with a rather large SP boost upon swapping back to her original version on top of dealing twice the Arts damage compared to Stage 1 and with 20% extra slowing abilities.

Much like Skadi's Module Y, Specter the Unchained's PUM-Y focuses on providing incredibly strong buffs to her fellow Abyssal Hunters. The HP boost is simply massive (especially when paired with other team effects), and the SP recovery makes their already rather quick skill positively spammable. This skill provides a worse overall skill uptime for Specter the Unchained when using Skill 2, but not by a lot.

The different branches of Module Upgrades that Eunectes has access to are designed to either alleviate her biggest downsides or capitalize on her actual usage cases.

HES-X will provide a significantly better SP generation while blocking enemies, somewhat paliating her biggest issue and helping Eunectes have her Skill 3 ready more often.

HEX-Y, on the other side, focuses almost entirely on capitalizing on the few times her Skill 3 is actually up by giving her some extra damage from her self-buffing Talent at high HP. Be aware, though, that the actual numbers do leave something to be desired, especially past Stage 2.

GUA-X acts as a simple but very effective boost. With many squads completely replacing regular Medics in favor of Saria, this boost in her SP-boosting capabilities will enhance her support capabilities even further. Additionally, her Skill 3 will become a veritable SP battery, granting 2 SP per second to all viable targets. The Stage 3 of this Module leaves much to be desired, though, as Rhine Lab Operators don't get a lot out of SP support nor can they particularly whitstand the hits needed for Saria to start healing.

This Module Upgrade doesn't do anything particularly fancy or gamechanging for Ebenholz, but at the very least it lets him do his job a little bit better: blasting elite enemies and bosses into orbit. How much this damage increase is worth it is left to the reader's discretion.

The boosts of these Module Upgrades are completely carried by how overtuned Pozëmka's Typewriter is. While the numbers themselves are quite mediocre, the powerboost is still noticeable by how strong this Operator already is by default.

Stage 3 is a bit more questionable since the boost it provides is less than half of what Stage 2 gives, but it's still a far cry from an actual waste of materials.

Easily the most broken Module Upgrade in the game, HOK-X grants Gladiia nigh-unmatched regen and a whopping, permanent and unconditional 30% damage reduction against both Physical and Arts damage. Not only that, but this buff is also granted to all other Abyssal Hunters in the squad when she is deployed.

Even without taking into account the faction buffs, these Upgrades are already insanely powerful.

Since all of Mizuki's Skills interact with and rely on this Talent, AMB-X is a no-brainer to get. It will help Mizuki deal with large crowds of enemies even better by constantly utilizing his Arts capabilities and spreading status effects all over. The Stage 3 upgrade further boosts the Arts hit by another 5%, so it might be worth considering if you use his Skill 1 very often.

On the other hand, AMB-Y instead focuses almost entirely on boosting Mizuki's Attack via his culling effect. It's not incredible, but this boost could prove useful when dealing with hordes of both mooks and elites mixed together. The sustain effect is pretty forgettable, though.

Tired of constantly boosting Myrtle through Exusiai's Talent? Fret not! Now you can boost Elysium as well! All jokes aside, a permanent +6% boost to Attack is pretty nifty, and assigning a second ally the buff at least gives you a bit more control over who gets at least one of them.

The Attack increases may be pretty low on paper, but all Marksmen Snipers appreciate all the help they can get, so it's definitely a welcome addition if you wish to go as far as Stage 3.

While MAR-Y may not seem that incredible, 9 starting SP means Archetto will be able to cast her Skill 2 immediately upon deployment, and her Skill 3 in 6 seconds (or as soon as her Shield pops!). This greatly boosts Archetto's capabilities as an opener for most maps, allowing her to deal with earlier threats with easy and cover lanes while you gather DP for more powerful Operators.

On the other hand, MAR-X provides Archetto with very strong SP generation that shines when she's deployed to support others via her DPS for the entire fight. These upgrades, specially when paired with other snipers to trigger her conditional Skill, will greatly enhance her combat viability.

This effect will very quickly boost Nian's Attack and Defense by a significant amount permanently, making it quite a large stat boost for essentially no setup. With all three stacks of this buff, Nian will very easily surpass 900 Defense without any of her skills active just via her Stage 2 boost, going even higher if the Module is fuly upgraded.

Straightforward stat boosters like these are usually not all there, and Siege needs a little bit more love to gain any relevance in the game as it is today, but the Stage 2 of this Module can give her an extra 100 Burst DPS for her third Skill and a bit more DPH on her second one, which is decent enough that an avid Siege user might want to invest a little on this. Still, keep in mind her other Upgrade branch is significantly more useful.

These Upgrades focus exclusively on keeping Saga self-reliant for a while longer by extending the timer of her survivability Talent and the amount of HP she can recover from it. While the numbers on these Upgrades are not that bad, the usefulness of a longer timer is somewhat questionable as Saga wants other Operators to be deployed alongside her as soon as possible to take advantage of her other Talent, providing a sort of diminishing returns as the timer gets longer, past the point where the DP generation is enough to deploy the more expensive Operators in your party.

This Upgrade path focuses almost entirely on making Flametail’s third Skill noticeably stronger, providing around 1.5k extra on-Skill damage for her rather quick cycle with its Stage 2. The fact that it doesn’t boost her dodge capabilities even further is a tad disappointing, but at least she does get some interesting boosts out of it.

Extra on-Skill damage for such a powerful, quick-cycling Operator is simply silly. Going to Stage 2, Texas the Omertosa gets a boost of 1.5 or 1.1k total damage per cycle depending on which Skill she has equipped, going up to an extra 1.2k or 950 on the next step. Considering how quick and powerful her cycles are, these Upgrades are practically no-brainers.

This Upgrade path exclusively focuses on boosting Schwarz’s burst damage via even higher multipliers, with an incidental support bonus through her better Defense shred. Overall these Upgrades provide some of the highest increases in raw burst DPS out of all Modules, increasing it by about 300 going to Stage 3. Definitely worth getting if you use Schwarz’s third Skill often.

The increased number and time of the Stun improves Kal’tsit’s performance in very niche scenarios as a quick, on-demand stun bomb when Mon3tr is placed outside her range, but players will most likely not get much out of this unless they specifically aim for high-end content, such as Difficulty 15 IS3, where this stun can be quite valuable at times. As an additional note, the vast majority of players will likely find her second Module Upgrade far more useful.

This Upgrade path is almost entirely oriented towards Dusk's third Skill, Image over Form, which is already not her most used one in any context. Regardless, the SP support is actually quite powerful for her, potentially cutting the monstrous SP cost of 100 to 83 if just one Freeling remains alive for its entire timer after the Skill has finished, and significantly less if she manages to have multiple on the field at the same time. Each of these remaining Freelings will provide an instance of extra SP support, cutting down on the cycling significantly. All other effects are nice too, although much more incidental for Dusk’s kit than the SP support she desperately needs if she wants to use her third Skill more than once in a blue moon.

These Module Upgrades help Swire alleviate one of the biggest issues of her kit: the absolutely horrid SP requirement she has.

The buff amount will still not be all there, so her issues arent completely fixed, but it will definitely help her have her Skills ready when need be.

Not an incredibly impactful boost, but anything that interacts positively with Abyssal Hunter teams is still worth considering. Even standalone, Andreana can still take advantage of this effect, middling as it may be.

This upgrade is absolutely paramount to Leizi's kit, massively improving her Skill cycling capabilities through powerful and consistent SP gains. The damage increase leaves much to be desired (which is why Stage 3 is not recommended), but the SP effect on Stage 2 is well worth it.

Extra Attack Speed on a stall-oriented Operator that heavily relies on being able to attack is always a welcome sight. While it doesn't improve Bibeak's cycling in such a way that her stall abilities become significantly better, it's still a good addition to her kit that provides a little bit more leeway and may open more stall strats in the future.

These Upgrades almost entirely focus on enhancing the performance of Wild Mane's Skill 1 and the way it combos well with her Guard cost reduction Talent. If you prefer using her first Skill, you will probably be able to take significant advantage of this boost, especially considering how she refunds all her DP cost when retreated thanks to the Stage 1 effect.

As little as an 8% boost looks on paper, Franka is one of those Operators whose main Skill actively interacts with their talent. In her case, a mere 8% on her base Talent transforms into a 20% extra chance to ignore Defense through her Skill 2, which is her main niche. This Module Upgrade makes Franka significantly more reliable.

The second part of this Module Upgrade boost means Flamebringer will no longer have to defend a lane by himself for half an hour to avoid any killsteals, which will help him get the full HP stacks much, much more easily. If you are willing to go the extra mile, the Stage 3 Module gives him an extra 300 HP through this Talent.

Usually Module Upgrades with this sort of effect barely increase the crit chance of each attack by ~5%, but Meteorite's boosts her own by a whopping 20%, which will be quite meaningful for her high-damage Skills, giving her a significant boost in both consistency and damage.

The second stage of this Module provides Astgenne with a decent enough boost in Attack Speed, and it quickens the rate at which she obtains the stacks from her Talent. With this Upgrade, she reaches a higher maximum potential even faster than she can reach the base one without any Module Upgrade.

While this effect does not massively boost April's DPS, a redeployment timer and original DP cost decrease is practically everything she could ask for. Due to her redeploy-heavy playstyle, these benefits give more and more mileage as the stages go on, saving up a ton of DP and letting April control the battlefield much more freely.

The Attack Speed modifications of this Talent are quite powerful, and give Lunacub a decent boost in her burst DPS and total on-Skill damage. Her cycling, however, is sadly not all there and leaves something to be desired, which knocks the ratings for these Upgrades from an easy Yes to a Maybe. You will probably get good use out of these boosts if you use Lunacub regularly, but keep the cycling issue in mind.

The boosted effect of this Module Upgrade is entirely focused on improving the effectiveness of her Skill 2, Cardiac Stimulant, which stops her from healing unless Operators are at low enough HP. Given how this Talent interacts and stacks with the Skill’s effect, it can result in some impressively high bursts of healing when you need them the most, but it’s still nothing but pure healing. 

Warfarin’s Module Upgrades opt to boost her already rather strong SP support even further, with the slight caveat of only working against Elite or Boss enemies. While this extra support can be inconsistent and extremely map dependent, the line between Normal and Elite is blurry, and enemies most players would consider “regular” fit into the latter group. If you enjoy Warfarin’s SP support abilities, this is a really neat addition to that kit.

Given Deepcolor has no way to regenerate her summons other than completely retreating from the battlefield, any boost in survivability is more than welcome. The lack of any offensive boosts leaves something to be desired, but it's still a serviceable upgrade.

Extremely simple, but this small boost of 13% is enough to massively propel Cutter's skill uptime, letting her use her Skills much more often. These Upgrades significantly boost her consistency and DPS.

Despite already having a great HPS on her Skill 2, this new Talent will her Purestream be able to utilize her first one even better thanks to the massive burst of healing it will be able to provide. Even if you want to continue using her Skill 2, the extra HPS is really nothing to scoff at!

Though it may not seem like much, this boost allows Greyy to maintain a 100% Slow uptime with his Skill 2, aiding in his crowd control mechanics. 

Once more, the strength of Indigo's Module Upgrades come from how her Skill 2 interacts with the Talent it modifies. In this case, her Bind chances are multiplied by 3 when her Skill is active for a 75% chance to bind. This, however, applies independently to all projectiles, and with no external modifiers Indigo is able to hold 2 extra charges (3 attacks at once) every time her target is bound. This results in a whopping 98.5% chance of chaining another Bind, or 99.3% with P5.

As with the previous Operator, Ethan's Module Upgrade is boosted by his Skill 2 quite significantly, resulting in an 84% chance to bind per attack compared to his former 75%. Not only that, but the duration extension also means he is now able to permanently keep enemies bound without the need of any Attack Speed boost at all, which makes Ethan one of the biggest winners where Module Upgrades are concerned.

Vermeil does not particularly struggle with her own SP costs, but nevertheless such a direct upgrade to her own basic SP recovery is always very welcome. These Module Upgrades will noticeable boost her overall Skill cycling and Average DPS.